I get paid direct in to my bank account, it takes longer to go through over a weekend and bank holidays. WHY! do bank computers all get turned off at 5 o’clock on a Friday, no because when I spend money on my debit card at the weekend it comes out straight away. The trouble with bankers is they are all a bunch of bankers.

You'll find it can take a lot longer than just 3 days. The cheque needs to be sent to the cheque clearing centre, put onto microfiche, credited to your account, reconciled with the originating bank, etc. If I remember correctly, the originator gets interest for part of the cycle, but not all. There are strong protocols that define who does what, and when, else the banking system would collapse ... ah, I can see a problem here.

"Faster Payments" are near-instantaneous, and all the major banks use this relatively new protocol for the vast majority of inter-bank transactions

And to answer Scroat's question - "because they can't be arsed". They want cheques to disappear forever - they're expensive to handle and unreliable

And to answer godly - "because it's always been like that". It would require impossible synchronisation between ALL banks to change it - I'd estimate £10's of millions to fix it for each bank, with a very high risk of failure. And why should they, when "Faster Payments" is 24x7 ?

'sniff, sniff'........is that the merest whiff of crisp fivers, an impression of a fat biro on a chain in the index finger, the faint ink spatter on the collar, an air of knowing cynicism, and a Bentley key fob outline in your pocket.